I recently returned from an Artificial Intelligence Future in Education conference arranged by 21st Century Learning. It was a brilliant weekend of people meeting and sharing conversations about how they’re engaging with artificial intelligence.
What was clear is that many people are in the same boat. The boat on this occasion seems to have sails and is moving but does not have a rudder yet. Many schools promoted their ‘traffic light’ system of informing children when it is appropriate to use A.I. but not many people seemed to be talking about their established A.I. policy or curriculum development. There was a lot of creativity and invigorating presentations, which was very pleasing to see.
Then, I attended the EduTechExpo in Singapore. Showcase and stalls galore promoting new AI models and AI-powered enhancements. This is where I saw the slightly more vacuous side of artificial intelligence. I had actual conversations with sales people that shared new software to track the emotional regulation of students.
“But isn’t this the job of the teacher?” I asked.
“This helps,” She replied.
Another piece of software modelled was a facial recognition tracking software that calculated and recorded student and teacher engagement. Data such as focus, eye contact, questions asked – all scarily impressive but to what end? To admonish staff or student?
I felt that this was more leaning towards making education efficient but not really moving the craft forward. Education is a creative profession and this is not a creative solution.
We are getting closer to understanding the way that education is changing by artificial intelligence, but I remain curious as to which avenue we will travel down.
